


Leavetaking

by TenebriumStar



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Death and Dying, F/M, Illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 22:28:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3667587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenebriumStar/pseuds/TenebriumStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonight, he walks along the pier.  People notice him.  They turn and stare.  But it is not their faces he hears. Or their voices he hears.  It is hers.  Speaking to him, singing to him, a breathy whisper passing from her lips to his ears.  He listens. <i>Neither night nor sleep could separate us.</i>   Her touch lingers to this day.  Tantalizing fingertips trailing across his bare chest and arms, grazing the scar on his lip. The way she would press her forehead against his.  Mornings in bed together, naked and warm...In the dark of the night, when everything is quiet and he is alone, he swears to all that is holy that he can still hear her call his name.</p><p>Modern AU in which Cullen reflects on the death of Lavellan</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leavetaking

 

"We the mortals touch the metals,  
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,  
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,  
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:  
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye."  
― Pablo Neruda

_____________________________________________________

She sang to the small crowd, a haunting rendition of Radiohead’s _No Surprises_ on a vintage upright. Cullen Rutherford remembers the moment like it was yesterday; her image at the piano burned into his brain.  Years later, he could still see her in her faded jeans and tee.  The soft curve of her bottom lip.  Not quite a smirk, not quite a pout.  And the hair.  Oh, the hair.  Red and brilliant and bright.  But it wasn’t the shape of her mouth or her hair or even her voice that left him spellbound and breathless.  It was her eyes, tiny emeralds, deep and wise beyond their years, that inexplicably drew him to her, towards her, and inevitably into her life.

When she introduced herself afterwards she smelled of lavender.  She made some joke about listening to his records as a kid.  She was at least ten years younger than he was.  That was easy enough to deduce.  The age difference might have been a deal breaker for some, but never for her and certainly not to him.  The tabloids and the lecherous photographers that pursued the evolution of their relationship seemed almost fanatical about it.  One afternoon, in the early days while working together, she calculated the difference aloud. Seventeen years, five months and thirteen days. And he wanted to know if that bothered her.   _Of course not.  And why should it?_  Later, when the affair began he asked again. _My answer is the same as it was three years ago.  Nothing changes._

On that September evening, though, Alex Lavellan was just twenty-two. They spoke only briefly before she was pulled away again.  Someone had shoved a guitar in her hands and the requests started flying.  To this day Cullen couldn’t recall the song she played.  His only memory was of how she looked, perched there on the ledge...the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. There was something inherently sad in her smile, in her eyes.  In their reflection he saw scattered pieces of a larger puzzle that took him years to fully put together. But everyone has ghosts, don’t they? And she had more than most.

Once her performance was over he tried his damndest to get back to her.  But he was beset with his own distractions and it wasn’t until some time after dark that he found her sitting on the edge of the pool.  Jeans rolled up, feet in the water, the faintest of breezes blowing her hair.  The conversation began with some mundane comment.  The weather, maybe?  The party?  The exact topic was lost on him after all these years. They talked for what seemed like hours.  Most of the guests were gone when he walked her to her car.  And there, under a cloudless sky, she quoted Neruda. In Spanish.  He wanted a translation but she refused.  It was over a decade later, on his 50th birthday, that she gave him a book of Neruda’s poems of which was included Sonnet XVII.  Bookmarked on the page was a note penned in her left hand,   _“Long ago you asked for a translation…”_  

Had she lived, Alex would have been thirty-five that year.  Over a decade had passed since that birthday party where she sang and recited Neruda. That it was only because of an unexpected change in his plans that sent him to that party in the first place never failed to give him pause.  In retrospect, chances were high that he’d eventually come to know her; the trajectory of her extraordinary career was bound to intercept his path at some point or another.  But the exact nature of their relationship was certain to be a very different one.  

Alex Lavellan had come into his life at precisely the right moment.

Before their formal introduction, he’d heard the name Alex Lavellan in certain industry circles.  Young.  Talented. Indomitable.  A redhead.  Lots of labels. Never a face. Word on the street was she’d signed a deal with Vivienne de Fer’s label but not before hiring Blackwall Management.  Enter Tom Rainier.  Coincidentally (if you believe in that sort of thing) Rainier was also The Inquisition’s manager and had been for over 20 years. And it was at his surprise birthday party where Cullen was finally able to put a face to the name.  Alex was everything they said she was.  And more. Small in stature, yet lithe.  Her smile was lopsided, a scar bisected her left eyebrow, she swore constantly, and every now and then he’d catch a faint whisper of an accent.   Later, by the pool she confessed.   _Texas.  A southern accent, by all accounts, is_ not _sexy._

She could’ve sputtered gibberish and it wouldn’t have mattered.   

Tonight, he walks along the pier.  People notice him.  They turn and stare.  But it is not their faces he hears. Or their voices he hears.  It is hers. Speaking to him, singing to him, a breathy whisper passing from her lips to his ears.  He listens. _Neither night nor sleep could separate us._   Her touch lingers to this day.  Tantalizing fingertips trailing across his bare chest and arms, grazing the scar on his lip. The way she would press her forehead against his.  Mornings in bed together, naked and warm...In the dark of the night, when everything is quiet and he is alone, he swears to all that is holy that he can still hear her call his name.

Her very first album, _Anchor_ , turned into collaborative effort with The Inquisition.  Many days he’d walk into the studio and find her at the piano.  It was always some melancholic tune.  Sometimes there were words, but most often it was just the piano.  And he’d just watch her play.  In those early days when she was nothing but mystery he often wondered what events had given life to such sorrowful melodies.  Those songs never made it onto that album, or any album thereafter.  And now he wished that they’d been preserved.  Whether he would ever listen to them again was questionable.  It was more about preservation than anything. He simply wanted there to be a record.

The attraction was there from the very beginning.  No one could deny it or dismiss it.  If he hadn’t been married, their affair, in all likelihood, would have begun then and not three years later.  She was all he had ever wanted.  Then, in the beginning, and when she was terminal.  During their years of separation, when he recommitted himself to a miserable marriage in order to give Liam and Rachel a stable home, and while she battled recurrence.   For so long he held onto hope, the belief, that they would survive this.  That she would survive this.  He intended to marry her.  But time ran out and in the end she didn’t want to unnecessarily burden him. Her ring was still in its box there in his dresser drawer.  He couldn’t bring himself to part with it and he wondered if he ever would. A year after her death he couldn’t imagine loving anyone else ever again.

Thinking about her hurt.  Still.   Thirteen months to the day since her death and she is everywhere.  In the crowds, in the music, in the breaking waves of the sea, the first whispers of the morning light.  He remembers their very first kiss.  New York City. They are riding the elevator together as a half dozen intoxicated guests pile in.  Disguised and pushed to the back.  No one notices. No one cares who they are or what they are doing. Just two strangers in a hotel.  He doesn’t look at her when his hand closes around hers.  The sharp catch of her breath was all the assurance he needed. When the elevator door opened to the 15th floor he knew his life was about to forever change.

She said to him, _13 was my floor._

_Not tonight it isn’t._

And it had been perfect.  The miraculous way his body molded into her shallow curves as if she had been created for him and him alone.  Her warm, soft lips pressed to his.  Her mouth parting under the insistent pressure of his.  His fingers entwining themselves in the curls of her red hair.  The sound of his name on her lips.  Time had stolen many of the earliest memories but this was one he refused to relinquish.

Cullen squeezes his eyes shut against the torrential onslaught of memories that assail him now.  He would never forget that night or the dozens that followed thereafter.  Never.  The doctors, the cold sterility of that hospital room in New York City.  And the unthinkable diagnosis. They sat together on the bed, facing each other and the uncertainty of the future.  Their future.  Ever so insistent she was.  Not scared, she told him.  Just resigned.  She would accept whatever fate had in store for her.  But it was that stubborn insistence, that smile, that belied her true feelings.  She couldn’t hide.  Not from him.  He would have stayed with her.  He wanted to stay with her but her mind was firmly set against it.  They’d had a moment.  One brief, beautiful moment.  That was all.  She wasn’t going to allow him to throw away his life, his family for her.    _I don’t want to give you up_ , he said to her and she had replied,  _I was never yours to give up._

And so he’d left her, alone, in New York.  

It was the first of many regrets he would have when it came to their relationship.  Regrets that he would carry with him for the rest of his days, innumerable mistakes--so many he’d lost count.  

He pauses, now, at the the water’s edge as grief overwhelms him.  The last time he set foot on this beach was fourteen months ago.  Recovery was no longer tangible and Alex confessed that when it was all over and done she wanted her ashes scattered along the coast.  Final wishes.  He agreed despite thinking it a terrible idea.  He supposes, at the time, he foolishly believed a cure was still possible.  Delusion was easy.  Much easier than contemplating a world in which she no longer existed.

_Alex..._

Their love affair began on a warm October afternoon, six weeks after she’d ordered him from her hospital room.  The odds were stacked against them from the beginning.  Age.  Illness. Schedules. Prior commitments.  The list was staggering yet he recalled that first morning--after--waking up beside her and knowing, with every fiber of his being, that this was exactly where he belonged.   For her, he was willing to give up everything, and for a while, he did.

He broke that promise.  She didn’t fight him or try and dissuade him because she understood that his life was so much more than her.  On a snowy balcony in Boston, as she prepared for the biggest battle of her life, they whispered their goodbyes for a second time. He remembered the weather being unusually mild for January and the brilliant reflection of the sun on the waterfront.  It was an insult.  The world continued on while everything he had ever wanted was coming to an end.  And she looked absolutely adorable in her winter parka and boots; her cheeks and nose pink from the wind. _You’re doing the right thing,_ she told him.   _Go home to Rachel and Liam.  Be the father they need you to be.  And when the time is right, I’ll be waiting_.

The next time she is in his arms, she is healthy.  And pregnant with another man’s baby.  Cullen would be lying if he said it didn’t bother him, that jealousy didn’t sometimes churn in the pit of his stomach or fester in his mind like an infected wound.  But he couldn’t hate Alistair Theirin or blame him for what happened.  After all, Cullen had been the one to walk away.  

Inevitably, his thoughts stray to Alex’s daughter, Violet. Not yet five, she was already a carbon copy of her mother.  Furious red hair, inquisitive green eyes, spitfire personality.  In the spring, on a trip to Yosemite, Alistair stopped in L.A. and Cullen was blessed with a visit.  It wasn’t something Alistair was required to do; Alex had never demanded that he allow Cullen a bit part in Violet’s life.  Fact of the matter was Alistair didn’t owe him a damn thing.  Having been completely cut out of the first few years of his daughter’s life, Alistair had every right to refuse him a relationship. Had the tables been turned, and it was Cullen who’d been deceived, he doubted very much that he’d be so hospitable towards the man who’d falsely assumed paternity.  

What if?  It was the question that plagued his thoughts.  What if Alex had lived?  What if he had been there instead of Alistair?  For a very brief bit of time he assumed he’d have everything with Alex.  The evening of her 32nd birthday, right before the start of their respected tours, he’d promised her what he’d never been able to give her in the past.  A future together.  Irony, that’s what it was.  All those beautiful promises and plans, and the tumors were already growing inside her.  

Cullen’s phone vibrates in his pocket.  A text from Alistair confirming the time he was expected in the morning.  Cullen doesn’t know if he has the strength to go through it...fulfilling Alex’s final wish...facing Alistair and Violet, all of Alex’s friends...Dorian, Sera, Cass... quite possibly for the last time.  The final bit of legal matters regarding her estate had been settled. The home they shared during the final years of her life had been sold. Everything had been sold, in fact, save but a few of her most precious possessions.  Guitar.  Journals.  Pictures.  The condo he purchased after her death was on the market but he had no intention of sticking around for a buyer.  The Inquisition was going back into the studio in a few months and he had a new granddaughter he hadn’t met. Italy sounded nice.  Maybe he’d spend the winter in Switzerland.  Alex always loved it there.

He casts one final look at the vast expanse of ocean before him.  It is not grief he feels now, but an overwhelming sense of peace and acceptance. And the comforting knowledge that life moves forward.  Inevitably. That the pain of loss really does ease with time. Vacancies in the heart fill. Maybe not now or anytime soon. But eventually. And Cullen is okay with that. Their life together was a unending succession of mistakes and tragedy.  And yet, at the same time, it was nothing short of extraordinary.  And that is the word that comes to him now as he turns from the water’s edge.  Simply put,  Alex Lavellan was the most extraordinary person he’d ever known.

Or would ever know.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/Comments are always appreciated <3


End file.
